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Hi! I’m David Laing. You’re receiving this because at some point you must have subscribed to my monthly newsletter, possibly from davidklaing.com or Twitter. Welcome! To those of you who have been here for a while: I decided to drop the title, ‘Linking Out Loud’. I know, ‘David Laing’s Newsletter’ isn’t as colorful, but it feels cleaner and it pleases me.

A substantial portion of this month’s issue is just me copy-pasting things that @context_ing recommended to me. If you’re on Twitter, follow him!

Fresh perspectives

1. Andy Matuschak’s working notes. There is so much to learn from both the form and content of this incredible site. If you have any interest in note-taking, digital gardens, or tools for thought, I highly recommend spending an hour exploring it. There’s no index or search, so you have to just wander around for a while by following links. Here are some good entry points:

2. The Mental Model Fallacy, by Cedric Chin. Many people believe they can fast-track their mastery of a skill by learning its ‘mental models’—conceptual frameworks like the ones described on Farnam Street. As is often the case, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Better to take the hard way:

Read from the source material of master practitioners, copy their actions, climb their skill trees, and reflect through trial and error.

3. The phases of remote adaptation, by Gitlab. Remote work shouldn’t be just business-as-usual plus Zoom. As someone who has worked remotely for two years now at a company that does it well, I was interested to read this outline of how to level up as a remote organization. It pairs well with Sam Harris’s conversation with Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress, on the same subject.

Of notes

The best new album I heard was Jeremy Zucker’s debut, “love is not dying”. I’d classify it as ‘existential pop’; it’s sonically adjacent to Billie Eilish, but in my opinion a bit catchier. Here’s a Spotify link, or listen on YouTube:

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